There is substantial and growing interest in LGBT history and, to a much lesser extent, psychiatric survivor history. But, we asked, what happened to women? Although female homosexuality wasn’t criminalised, unlike male homosexuality, it was still classified as a mental disorder (‘sexual deviation’) that could be medically treated. For gay men, aversion therapy involved being given emetic drugs and receiving electric shocks while they viewed naked images of men. Sarah Carr and I first met several years ago at a mental health conference when she presented a powerful account of her experiences of being a gay woman and a psychiatric survivor.Īfterwards, we spoke about a colleague’s research into gay men’s experiences of receiving aversion therapy to ‘treat’ their sexuality.
